vendredi, 30 janvier 2009

What happens when you have something in life that isn't very usable? Generally speaking, one moves on to something more convenient. I pick on Mac users from time to time and they me, but always in passing and simply to let the PC vs. Mac battle rain down on everyone for fun. I have even said that I would probably someday have to use a Mac, but only in a work environment that demanded it.Well, today I must say that that day came and it was adventurous. For what it's worth to say from the start, I even had a glorified keyboard...at least that's what they told me.Situation one: So, I'm in TextWrangler writing some PHP code for a database read. I need to make an edit and I go to push the home key (apparently part of the aforementioned keyboard and doesn't come standard issue) to go to the beginning of the line. It doesn't work. I push the end key; no effect. So rather than one push of a key, it takes me 50 pushes of the arrow keys. Incredibly efficient! Mind you, I even asked the Mac gurus in the office to show me how to do what I'm trying to do because of my unfamiliarity with Macs and their keyboards. The response: "Yeah, that took some getting used to when I first started using a Mac. I even downloaded a third-party mapping program to generate keyboard shortcuts like that." Conclusion: Mac usability is out the window.Situation two: The boss comes over and want me to install a new program on the Mac. This involves opening a cd drive tray. Let me put it this way, two Mac gurus standing there and neither of them were sure how to open the tray on the Mac tower. We had to Google it. Let me compare for you how to open a cd/dvd drive tray:PC - push eject button on cd/dvd driveMac - If your eject button on the keyboard doesn't work, that is, if you even have one - go into the terminal window, type drutil tray open. If that doesn't work (and it didn't) type drutil tray eject. That worked.Seriously?! It takes all that to open the drive tray? Note that it took sending the command twice to get it to eject the disc. If the OS needs to dismount the drive first and then eject then say so. Conclusion: PCs will continue to dominate in the universe.